What happens when a global pandemic shuts down F1, Nascar, Indycar and other professional auto racing? The pro racers become internet competitors! Real life F1 stars Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, IndyCar drivers Simon Pagenaud and Felix Rosenqvist, and a bevy of popular professional sim racers and YouTube personalities got together and raced online. There were commentators and the virtual event was every bit as good as an actual live one by most accounts.

This raises some really fascinating implications for our post-corona world. With computers and simulators becoming ever better – as good as real life – could the likelihood of increasing numbers of pandemics like H1N1 and Covid-19 cause a major shift in real sports?

Could real or interrupted seasons be augmented, or even completely replaced, by online competitions? What would this mean for the millions in advertising and promotion that ride on these events? Will giant, technology ladened stadiums become a thing of the past? And while these online events were friendly, it also brings up the extremely difficult topics of hacking, doping, cheating, and other nefarious activities already plaguing e-Sports.

“Computers are good at lots of tasks – but they’ll never replace creative activities and artists”

May I present Pouff’s grocery shopping video was created back in 2015, using neural network technology which attempted to identify animal faces in places where they didn’t actually exist.

Incidentally, Mario Klingemann disagrees with the first statement. “Humans are not original,” he says. “We only reinvent, make connections between things we have seen.” While humans can only build on what we have learned and what others have done before us, “machines can create from scratch”

Rutger Hauer enjoyed an international reputation for playing everything from romantic leads to action heroes to sinister villains. His list of movies is impressive: The Hitcher, Hobo with a Shotgun, Batman, and probably his crowning work: Blade Runner.

Hauer died in July 2019 at the age of 75 – the same year his character died in Blade Runner. Dystopian LA 2019.